DICE announces new details on Aftermath, the next expansion for Battlefield 3, their military shooter sequel. This is due today for PS3 BF3 Premium subscribers today for PC and Xbox 360 Premium subscribers on December 4th. For others, the PS3 release will be December 11th, and the PC and Xbox 360 version for all is expected on December 18th. Here's word on what it will offer:

In Battlefield 3: Aftermath players can weave through the shattered districts, streets and cities in three new vehicles including heavily modified troop transports and a civilian vehicle adapted to deliver deadly force to the enemy. Battlefield 3: Aftermath also sees the debut of Scavenger mode – an objective based conquest where players must brave the environment armed with only one sidearm, as they try to find more powerful weapons in an attempt to survive with their squad. In addition to this, Battlefield 3: Aftermath delivers a new deadly and versatile crossbow for more silent kills, ten new assignments, dog tags, trophies, achievements and more.

Yeah.. but what can ye do.. I can't fix it, and SOE doesn't even have a official communication infrastructure.. this is exactly why I *NEVER* buy anything from Sony. There is no way to get absolutely ANY kind of official word on any issue that is not a full blown PR bullshit release...

Given that this is a F2P i also don't feel like providing information "somewhere" that is ignored by the official sources. There is no way to get any contact with developers. I mean, I would be happy to just read "We are aware of severe performance issues for some related to low cpu usage and are working on it" .. but instead, NOTHING. (Or at least I didn't find it ;p)

2. Map size/scale = Thank you consoles. The layout of most maps are not impressive, especially the vanilla ones. When your flying, it feels like your in a fish bowl. I'm not sure why they had to put every control point 5 feet from each other either. There's a lot of wasted space on some of the larger maps.

3. Dumbed down gameplay. Removing features that were in older BF games. Regenerating health, infinate ammo in vehicles. You can get hit in a chopper, start flying away from combat and it like 5 seconds you start magically healing. Lame.

I could go on, but don't feel the need. I wish they would have made the Medal of Honor series more COD'ish and kept the BF series more PC centric. That way people who like single player and small fast paced multiplay could have their cake, and people who like large scale more tactical game play could have their BF game back.

The netcode is my deal breaker though. I'm pretty much done with BF3, and unless I hear them talk of revamping the netcode with BF4, I'm not even going to consider a purchase.

ItBurn wrote on Nov 27, 2012, 15:48:Yeah, but, isn't that awesome? Hacking that doesn't ruin games? Hackers get the satisfaction of hacking, and I can still play my game and reach the top...

I care more about the team winning personally and I find the conclusion pretty subjective but uh, sure

Yeah, my main objective is always making the team win. But I like being at the top of my team, it usually means that you capped and defended the most. Except for those damn chopper pilots that get 50-0.

Jackplug wrote on Nov 27, 2012, 15:08:Farcry 3 has been pre ordered and will be blasting away myself in the jungle, as for BF3 not played that for many a month now and not interested at all cos its been hacked to hell with noone giving a shit to stop or ban them...

Been playing BF3 for several months now. I'm always in the top 3. I still can't say that I've seen a hacker. I've seen some fishy aiming from one guy, but his strategy was mind blowing, and that couldn't be hacked, so I'm not entirely sure if he was aimbotting. One thing's for sure, hacking isn't ruining the game for me.

Hacking is way more subtle these days, go look at a BF3 multihack on Youtube sometime. It can be really difficult to spot people using them as the average cheater doesn't advertise or make it obvious unless hes trolling for ragequitters. Some guy on Reddit awhile ago did a little video where he loaded one up and it was eye opening. To make matters worse EA doesn't really seem to do anything with the cheaters, they handed out some token bans near launch but the rest is just stat resets. The client has an absurd level of control, probably due to some console design aspects and they said they were going to fix up the netcode but AFAIK never did.

Yeah, but, isn't that awesome? Hacking that doesn't ruin games? Hackers get the satisfaction of hacking, and I can still play my game and reach the top...

Jackplug wrote on Nov 27, 2012, 15:08:Farcry 3 has been pre ordered and will be blasting away myself in the jungle, as for BF3 not played that for many a month now and not interested at all cos its been hacked to hell with noone giving a shit to stop or ban them...

Been playing BF3 for several months now. I'm always in the top 3. I still can't say that I've seen a hacker. I've seen some fishy aiming from one guy, but his strategy was mind blowing, and that couldn't be hacked, so I'm not entirely sure if he was aimbotting. One thing's for sure, hacking isn't ruining the game for me.

Hacking is way more subtle these days, go look at a BF3 multihack on Youtube sometime. It can be really difficult to spot people using them as the average cheater doesn't advertise or make it obvious unless hes trolling for ragequitters. Some guy on Reddit awhile ago did a little video where he loaded one up and it was eye opening. To make matters worse EA doesn't really seem to do anything with the cheaters, they handed out some token bans near launch but the rest is just stat resets. The client has an absurd level of control, probably due to some console design aspects and they said they were going to fix up the netcode but AFAIK never did.

Jackplug wrote on Nov 27, 2012, 15:08:Farcry 3 has been pre ordered and will be blasting away myself in the jungle, as for BF3 not played that for many a month now and not interested at all cos its been hacked to hell with noone giving a shit to stop or ban them...

Been playing BF3 for several months now. I'm always in the top 3. I still can't say that I've seen a hacker. I've seen some fishy aiming from one guy, but his strategy was mind blowing, and that couldn't be hacked, so I'm not entirely sure if he was aimbotting. One thing's for sure, hacking isn't ruining the game for me.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 27, 2012, 13:02:And I have terrible performance issues on Planetside 2, below 20fps in largish battles with everything on LOW, never above 30-40 in "normal" not even 30 people battles.

AMD Phenom 2 X6 1090T on a 670GTX and 16GB Ram.. and this game runs like crap. Either I have hit an engine bug, or they optimized this game with bribe money from Intel instead of an actual coder optimizing it for 6 core cpu's.. by the way, I am above their updated recommended specs.

20fps in a battle, is instant uninstall for me. So I tried, I uninstalled, epic fail.

Farcry 3 has been pre ordered and will be blasting away myself in the jungle, as for BF3 not played that for many a month now and not interested at all cos its been hacked to hell with noone giving a shit to stop or ban them...

Yeah but meh, it was free to try. I just wanted to play it but I guess there are other things to play.....

Needless to say, my first impression is devastating and so is my opinion about the game. And looking at forums everywhere, you find performance issues across the board, my cpu usage for example never even goes to 50% on 5th and 6th core not even 20%. Meaning the game uses like.. a fourth of my systems power. No wonder it runs like crap, but with Sony I have 0 hope of a fix. I am really sad about this, I wanted to play PS2, but yeah.. again, first impression was devastating. Gonna take a while until I try that disaster again.

Also, I have a [CPU] next to the FPS counter... If I am cpu bound, why the sodding hell is it not actually using my cpu!

Oh, googling this I seem to be not alone on this cpu "usage" related issue. For some it's not even 20% usage.. hah. Good thing I didn't "found" this mess... I'd be pretty pissed off then.. but so I am just curious how this issue is even possible.

I can run the Planetside 2 ok, but it does run like shit for no reason when you see how it looks (I got 8 cores at 3.2, 12 gigs of ram and a gtx 460). Also, there's a fundamental issue with aiming. It's not smooth, it's incredibly not smooth. It's very hard to aim precisely and it's killing the whole game for me.

eRe4s3r wrote on Nov 27, 2012, 13:02:And I have terrible performance issues on Planetside 2, below 20fps in largish battles with everything on LOW, never above 30-40 in "normal" not even 30 people battles.

AMD Phenom 2 X6 1090T on a 670GTX and 16GB Ram.. and this game runs like crap. Either I have hit an engine bug, or they optimized this game with bribe money from Intel instead of an actual coder optimizing it for 6 core cpu's.. by the way, I am above their updated recommended specs.

20fps in a battle, is instant uninstall for me. So I tried, I uninstalled, epic fail.

Great performance on a really modest Core 2 Duo box at a buddys place last night!

And I have terrible performance issues on Planetside 2, below 20fps in largish battles with everything on LOW, never above 30-40 in "normal" not even 30 people battles.

AMD Phenom 2 X6 1090T on a 670GTX and 16GB Ram.. and this game runs like crap. Either I have hit an engine bug, or they optimized this game with bribe money from Intel instead of an actual coder optimizing it for 6 core cpu's.. by the way, I am above their updated recommended specs.

20fps in a battle, is instant uninstall for me. So I tried, I uninstalled, epic fail.

I'm having a great time in Planetside 2. Nice to see someone still making large open battlefield games. PS2 is what I wanted out of BF3. They need to work on the controls for air power though, fucking awful. You can roll your aircraft sideways and it still fly's straight... doesn't even turn. (bank 30 deg to the left, you should be slowly turning left)

I tried setting up my gamepad to see if that made it any easier (than keyboard / mouse) and my god that was the weirdiest experience I've ever had. Nothing moved and operated how I thought it should. My mind could not adjust to the controls it wanted from me with the game pad. It works ok on the keyboard though...